Repaying Kindness with Results

Now an executive officer at thirty-one, he states his engine plainly: "I want to repay the debt of being raised here — not with words, but with results." Everyone speaks of repaying kindness; he restricted it to "with results," and that restriction contains his whole growth.

Verbal gratitude ends on the spot; deciding to repay with results converts gratitude into long-term fuel — with every product finished and every junior raised, you keep asking, "Have I returned a little more?" Better never to finish repaying: the repaying itself builds you.

And he knows the direction too: "What the chairman did for me, I will now do for the generation below — raising not one successor but many." Kindness is not only returned upward; it is passed downward. As long as that chain continues, a company grows stronger across generations. Where is the kindness you received heading now?

What do you work for?